USA TODAY International Edition
Ocean unveils deepest marvels, no missing jet
Flight 370 search reveals much, but mystery unsolved
The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 didn’t uncover the missing airliner, but it revealed previously undiscovered volcanoes, mountain ridges and deep trenches studded with shipwrecks and anchors.
Most of the ocean floor remains uncharted territory — unmapped, unexplored, unknown.
Though the three- year search for the missing jet that carried 239 people was fruitless, it mapped a section of the Indian Ocean that’s the size of Pennsylvania.
Geoscience Australia, a government agency, released the seafloor data Wednesday, seven months after the governments of Australia, Malaysia and China called off the search that cost $ 160 million.
The mapping helped guide remote- controlled sonar vessels that pinged the depths for signs of the Boeing 777. The only pieces of the jet recovered washed up on islands and the east coast of Africa.
Stuart Minchin, chief of Geoscience Australia’s environmental geoscience division, said only 10% to 15% of the world’s oceans have been surveyed in such detail, “making this remote part of the Indian Ocean among the most thoroughly mapped regions of the deep ocean on the planet.”
The data revealed ridges nearly 4 miles wide and 9 miles long that peak nearly a mile above the seafloor. Valleys 3 miles wide dip nearly 4,000 feet deep.
“This data will contribute to a greater understanding of the geology of the deep ocean and the complex processes that occur there,” Minchin said.
The Malaysia flight from Kuala Lumpur and Beijing went missing with 239 people aboard March 8, 2014. Radar and satellite tracking suggested it continued to fly until it ran out of fuel and crashed somewhere in the Indian Ocean, about 1,000 miles west of Perth, Australia.
In announcing the end of the search in January, the governments of Australia, Malaysia and China left open the possibility of restarting the hunt.
“We remain hopeful that new information will come to light and that at some point in the future, the aircraft will be located,” the governments said in a statement.
The only debris found from the jet were 20 relatively small pieces that washed up thousands of miles away along the eastern and southern coasts of Africa and the islands of Madagascar, Mauritius, Reunion and Rodrigues.
Investigators spent nearly three years intensely searching for the main wreckage in the hopes of explaining what caused the disaster.
The seafloor mapping of 46,000 square miles revealed part of the world scientists hope will help them better understand geology and habitats for sea creatures.